Dancing to the tune of thoughts

We keep dancing to the tune of our thoughts. For some, it will look like a very weird statement. They will feel who is dancing. There is so much identification with the thoughts that even the slightest awareness of that freedom is lost. "I" become the thoughts and thoughts become "I".

Let's go back to the past when these thoughts were getting formed. During childhood, did we have the same thoughts? Definitely not. We wanted to play with our friends and have fun. The accumulation of wealth and power was not at all on the agenda. Our thoughts have undergone a significant change. In fact, as we grow in age, our thoughts keep changing with each experience. Yet, each moment, we identify so strongly with these thoughts as if we have no separate existence. If we have these thoughts, we should remain same throughout the life. But that is never the case.

If we analyze carefully, most of these thoughts are the memories of the experiences as interpreted by the mind. A child looks at some shadow during the night and his brain is unable to make meaning of the same. He discusses the same with the parents and the friends. They, due to their ignorance, call it a ghost and that child makes mental meaning of that image. He starts correlating all his life experiences with that interpretation and starts making mental stories of that. In his mind, the ghost is a reality and if anybody challenges that, he is not going to accept that.

It so happens with all of us. We are sold the idea of having a good career in childhood. If you become a doctor engineer or civil servant, you will have a good life. As a child, we accept this narrative without question. Each time we interact with friends, we make a mental story of each of these careers. We keep repeating this story in our mind and it starts looking more real than the reality.

This is the same with relations. Our mind draws certain presumptions about the relative. These presumptions give rise to expectations that may be far away from reality. Two persons in the same relationship may have a very different understanding of the relationship. But for each of them what they feel about the relation is a reality.

So, We identify with the sum total of all the memories that our brain has created by assigning our customized meanings to reality. We keep validating these meanings with our friends and family in particular and society in general. Since society has by and large consensus on many of these mental meanings, there is no occasion to change the same unless we move away from the society to a different society having different mental meanings.

As we grow in age, we become more on more fixated on our mental meanings. We start protecting and defending these meanings. Even sometimes, we fight for these meanings. Sometimes, these mental meanings become so strong that some go to the extent of becoming terrorists to impose our mental meanings on the entire society. We become intolerant towards the mental meanings of other communities and people.

Mind is a very powerful tool, if we know how to use it. Otherwise, we may live our entire lives just dancing to its tunes. We can fix it with a very simple trick. While making the meaning of any experience, we have to be aware. If we are aware, we will be able to see the contextual background of the mental meaning and the gaps in the input that the brain is trying to fill the imagination. With this awareness, we see the shadow and realize that since we do not have sufficient information, the mind is trying to hurriedly assign some meaning to it calling it a ghost. That is the natural instinct of the mind. It can not spend too much time discovering its true meaning because it may be dangerous to its survival. It has to assign a quick meaning to it and move on.

If we remain aware of the context and the gaps in information, we will be able to reset the experience as and when we get the missing pieces of information or the context changes. As we gain command of our lives, rather than dancing to the tunes of our minds, we will be able to use it as a tool and have richer experiences of life.